


Letters Unread, or Ode to the Colour Brown

by anotherupstart



Series: Words Unsaid [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Steve Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:15:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26107804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotherupstart/pseuds/anotherupstart
Summary: In the heat of battles, things happen. Sometimes things go wrong. And to keep it together Steve thinks about all the things he loves. About Tony.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Series: Words Unsaid [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1933777
Kudos: 6





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is follow-up to the previous story "Words Unsaid." Though you don't HAVE to read the first one to follow this one, just like you don't have to watch Avengers2 to enjoy CACW... but it helps. Here is a clue--Steampunk universe and soul marks.  
> Hope you like it.  
> And hope you like it enough to let me know what you think.

Time can be a fractious thing. In the span of a moment the sky falls and the world explodes. On one side of the moment all was well. On the other side, was hell.  
On one side of the moment the plan had worked.

Tony’s zepplin was a marvel. The perfect stealth vehicle. It glided on whispers in the dark night. They had followed a lone truck with Hydra militia men to their mountain fortress. The Wasp’s intel was spot on. The base, ah-ha-ha, was at the top of a mountain. An old abandoned schloss repurposed as a keep for all their stolen weaponry. There was a lot of activity on the ground. Jan was right, they were gearing up to make a move against Shield.  
Steve watched through the scope as ant-sized men loaded machinery and weapons on to trucks. He counted a line of 14 vehicles, some of them painted with Stark logos. He sensed Tony’s presence next to him.  
“Look at that! They’ve laid out the welcome mat for us. All lit up like a…” Tony said.  
“Bullseye,” Steve breathed.  
Tony smiled happily. “Ready?”  
“Ready, ready.”  
The plan was simplicity itself. The Schloss was well-guarded from the ground, but Tony’s zepplin was a secret no one knew about. SS Iron Man was a brilliant piece of engineering and steam-powered tech. If Steve hadn’t already been thoroughly besotted with Tony, he would have fallen in love with the man behind the Iron Man, all over again.  
The Hydra fort had four major weak points. Their water supply was an underground cave system that ran under the schloss and Tony calculated two well placed strikes would cause enough structural damage to cause the system to collapse taking most of the fort with it. The ammunition store was right in one of the turrets which had a convenient window right on top. Two of the guard towers would fall directly into the ravine on the other side of the mountain, if hit from a certain angle.  
They had not accounted for the activity in the courtyard. The loaded trucks were all out in the open. Steve calculated that they were so close to each other that one hit would cause a domino effect of explosions.  
Tony took the viewing scope and looked down at the milling militiamen.  
“Too many people,” he whispered. “I had hoped for a smaller body count.”  
The thing about raining fire from the skies, is that there is no controlling the fallout. Fire catches. And everything burns.  
“They made their choice when they signed up with Hydra,” said Nat.  
Tony closed his eyes.  
Rhodey, Clint and Bucky primed their missile cannons and Nat took her position next to Tony to steer Iron Man. Jan was on lookout and called in the target positions through the radio comm.  
Steve had the toughest role. He was in charge of guiding the missile through the window. A small target which would have been just right for Clint’s skills except for the fact that it would require him to be suspended from the Zepplin with a launcher that was too heavy for Clint to work.  
Steve picked up the harness and lifted the launcher on to one shoulder. Then, before Tony could react, he dipped down to steal a quick kiss and went to his position in the Iron Man underbelly.

Steve waited for the dark narrow shape of the arrow loop window in the tower to align in the cross hairs of the launcher. Then, he let out a deep breath and launched the missile. The weapon left the launcher with a whoosh and arced gracefully to the black slit in the tower. The recoil from the launcher spun Steve into a much less graceful swing but he used the momentum to point the heavy weapon down at one of the trucks and let it go. Along with a few well-aimed grenades. The explosions and the concussive blasts seemed to happen all at once and Steve began climbing up the swaying harness rope.  
By the time he was back on deck the schloss was a series of booming explosions and the multiple fires below were bright enough to light up the Iron Man.  
“We need to climb. We are visible,” Steve shouted into his comm over the noise of explosions. He bent down and disengaged the hook that attached his line to the body of the ship when he heard footsteps behind him. He turned around to see Tony scrambling across the deck and climbing over the side of the dirigible.  
Steve’s heart sped up like it should have when he was suspended thousands of metres above ground with only a few hundred feet of harness rope acting like a lifeline to the Iron Man. But his heartbeat had been steady then. Now as he screamed, “What are you doing? Tony? Tony!” Steve could put a hummingbird to shame.  
“Have to fix a break in the girder. Back in a mo,” Tony’s voice was cheerful and carefree, like he wasn’t climbing out of the rear engine gondola with a wrench in one hand. He disappeared out of view and Steve began running to the open hatch. The harness ropes tightened around him and he looked down to see the enormous tangle of wire and ropes. It would take too long to disentangle himself from this mess. He began to disengage the clasps of the harness instead and impatiently stepped out of the belts around his waist and thighs. He still had the tangle of ropes in a loose grip when Tony reappeared.  
Steve let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding. Tony was half-way in through the hatch, smiling at him, “Fixed it,” he said into his comm. “Lift now.” The ship lurched upwards and Tony paused to steady himself. Just then, a huge explosion in the schloss below sent a concussive blast rippling across the body of the zepplin and the Iron Man shuddered. Tony’s grip faltered.

And the moment ticked.  
Tony disappeared again but this time Steve jumped after him.

Time can be a fractious thing. The moment that ends the world can stretch to eternity.

It did so for Steve. He felt like he fell forever, just a fingertip away from Tony. The moment stretched like his fingers as Steve strained to reach the man he loved. With an intensity that felt like it left no room for anything at all. And he wondered if Tony would ever feel like that about him.  
There had been a time, when they had just found each other, when Steve felt that it was enough to love. But then Tony was like a drug. Little by little, he had tasted the wondrous, grown accustomed to the taste and he had started to want. And want. And his want had turned to greed. It scared Steve how much he wanted.  
And then he caught Tony’s ankle just as the tangle of rope in his hands pulled taut. The combined weight of the two men and the sudden jerk of the rope dislocated Steve’s shoulder. He gave a hiss of pain and looked up at the zepplin, still climbing away from the carnage of the schloss below. Wrapping his legs tightly around Tony’s knees, Steve freed his other hand and began the process of climbing up the rope. He remembered that the rope was not attached to anything at the other end. Only the tangle of wires kept it from unraveling all the way. He began climbing faster and suddenly there was a thump and the weight between his legs went slack.  
“Tony!” he screamed. They were on top of a forest now and the treetops were too close. Hanging upside down, as he was, Tony had been unable to avoid one of the large firs and had hit his head. Steve couldn’t see if he was bleeding, but he was unconscious.  
The rope jerked in his hands. The moment, like the rope between his fingers, began unspooling. The open deck hatch was a much larger target than the schloss arrow loop had been. Steve didn’t think. He just hoisted Tony up until he had his boyfriend on his shoulder and he began swinging his body until the arc of the pendulum brought him level with the window. The rope was no longer taut. He was out of time. With the last effort he could muster, Steve aimed and threw Tony at the target.

Falling, he watched as the limp body sailed through the gondola hatch. And Steve was swallowed by the darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

It was still dark when Steve woke up. A wolf howled in the distance. A dog barked closer by. Steve tensed. He knew he must have fallen some distance from the Hydra fort but there was no telling what kind of perimeter security there was in place. He began to push himself off the carpet of snow and stifled a grunt of pain. Then, careful to keep his weight off his injured shoulder, he raised his head.  
It took him a few moments to get his bearing. He had fallen through a narrow gap in the trees into a snowdrift and was now lying a foot deep in snow. Carefully raising his head over the edge of the snow, he waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark. There were trees all around, and a ridge to his right. From beyond the trees on his left the sky glowed a dull orange. He could not tell if it was dawn in the east, or the remains of the burning castle.  
The dog barked again. Steve jerked his eyes to the ridge where the silhouettes of two men and a dog appeared against the skyline. Steve quickly dipped back into his white grave and kicking his feet and elbow at the edge of the hole dislodged enough snow to cover himself and blur the edge of the man-shaped hole in the drift.  
He was face down in the snow but by balancing on his elbow, had left enough breathing room to hold the position for a while. Tactically it was a sound decision. He was injured, and had no weapons. He was in no position to take on two armed men and a dog. He had dropped from the sky, so the dog had not scented him yet, and with all this snow on top of him, there was a good chance, the guards would move on without knowing he was there. Intellectually he knew all that.  
But the snow burned his skin with its freezing fire and his mind had sent him back in time, to when he was a young boy and buried in a similar grave. That time, when he had dug himself out, he had left all his humanity behind. All his memories. His soul mark.  
In the dark, he couldn’t see if the words on his wrist were still there.  
This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening.  
Steve chanted the words in his mind. Even if the words disappeared from his skin again as he shivered so much he vibrated, he willed his mind to remember them. To remember Tony. The warmth of his touch and his smile. The warmth in his brown eyes. Brown like warm honey.

*

Steve hadn’t slept well. Maybe it was the unseasonable warmth of the humid night, maybe it was a nightmare, maybe it was the fact that Tony had not come to bed at all, maybe it was just that Tony had been so distracted that he had not even touched the hot cocoa Steve had got him, or that they had argued earlier that day and Steve did not even remember what it had been about… but whatever the cause, the effect was the same. Steve had laid in bed staring at the ceiling until the sun came up. Then he stared at the empty spot next to him, the pristine pillow and untouched sheet and got up with a sigh. He went for a longer than usual run, and had a longer than usual shower. Standing under the spray of cool water he wondered if it was possible for him to be less needy, or at least pretend? So he would not drive Tony away from him, suffocating him with his clingi-ness, his relentless need for Tony’s warmth.  
And then he had come to the kitchen where Tony was singing something so off key it was unrecognizable.   
“There you go,” he had said, his mouth full of a rolled up pancake as he put a stacked plate in front of Steve. Tony swayed and bopped his head, he looked at Steve with his dancing eyes and frowned.  
“Hey, what’s up?”  
Steve looked down at the stack of pancakes. It smelt delicious. Vanilla and cinnamon. Steve remembered his resolution to be less needy, more supportive. He had smiled.  
“Nothing now. What’s up with you?”  
“I had a breakthrough last night,” Tony said, stealing the top pancake from Steve’s plate and stuffing his face.  
“Tell me about it,” Steve said as he reached for his knife and fork. He did not have a sweet tooth and didn’t fancy syrup. Cloying sweetness, he felt, always drowned out the other flavours and his senses basked in the hints of vanilla and cinnamon that he could detect in the fluffy perfectly browned circles in front of him.  
Tony broke into a long technical rant. As he spoke he reached for a jar of dark honey and lifted the honey dipper from it, spinning it slowly between his long beautiful fingers and reaching across the table, to let it drip in golden strings across Steve’s pancakes. Steve watched entranced as Tony talked about tensile strength and honey dripped in a lovely brown string catching the morning light and glowing gold. Tony’s eyes lit up when he talked animatedly about his aha moment, when he figured out how to double durability while reducing the metal weight. And Steve watched the brown in Tony’s eyes glow gold in the morning light.  
Then Tony yawned, “Well, I’m going to bed. See you in a bit.”  
Then he dropped a kiss on Steve’s hair and he was gone.  
Steve looked down at his breakfast. Tony had dripped honey in heart shapes and they had melted into the soft fluffy pancakes leaving just the warm brown intertwined shadow hearts. Steve smiled and putting down his knife and fork rolled the top pancake and stuffed it into his mouth in two giant bites. The woody sweetness of honey, he decided, was much preferable to having it plain, with butter, or with cloying syrup. He was grinning like a lunatic by the time he finished. Then he yawned and decided he too was wiped out by last night. He settled down in bed next to Tony, pulling the sleeping form into himself. Tony snuffled.  
Steve had slept. His nose in Tony’s neck, and the taste of warm honey lingering on his lips, as sweet as Tony’s smiles.

*

Steve licked his lips clear of the snow and tasted the phantom sweetness of honey and Tony. He smiled and listened for the sounds of the men and the hound and waited until they left. The snow was not his grave, not today. It was just a place to hide and stay safe. There was a radio squawk summoning the men to the rescue efforts at the Hydra schloss. The men and their dog took off running. Steve rose a few seconds after and gulped in the fresh air. He lifted his eyes to his wrist. His soulmark told him that his fears were not justified. This can’t be happening, it reassured him.


	3. Chapter 3

Steve shuffled along blindly for a while. The glow in the sky had subsided. He knew then it had been the fire, not dawn, so he hadn’t been out of it too long. There was no sign of SS Iron Man in the sky. But then, there wouldn’t be. Tony had designed the dirigible to be nearly invisible in the night sky. And the plan had been to be far away from the mountains and back on land well before first light. Iron Man was a weapon only as long as nobody knew of its existence. He knew Bucky and Nat would stick to the plan. He wondered if Tony would. Steve hoped he wouldn’t do anything stupid like turn the ship around on an ill-thought out rescue mission. He wondered if Tony was alright. He closed his eyes and probed through the soul bond. But he could sense nothing. He wondered if that meant Tony was too far away. Or if he was still unconscious.  
That thought jolted him. He had to get to Tony before the man did something stupid like put himself into danger, or die. He stumbled on.  
Once he was fairly well-sheltered between trees he stopped. He had reached a little mountain stream, panting and doubled over with the effort. He sank to his haunches and took stock of the situation. His arm was numb with pain, handing limply down his side. He needed to set his shoulder, before he did permanent damage jogging it around. His face was scratched on one side, and his ankle hurt. Courtesy the fall, he suspected. The snow drift had cushioned his fall but it still had been a long way down. He gritted his teeth and stifled and cry as he shoved his arm back into its socket. Then removed his boot and frowned at his swollen ankle.  
Not good. He packed some snow into his sock to bring down the swelling and began to think. He needed to get off the mountain but he had no supplies. He was dressed warm thanks to his part in the mission, but he had no food or water. Well, water was not too much of a problem, he decided looking at the unending pristine snow drifts as far as the eye could see. But he was injured and even the suit Tony had designed with fancy exothermic lining was not going to keep him warm forever in this bitter cold.

*

Steve had been watching Tony work with some chemicals in his lab. It was one of his favourite things to do. Watching Tony be clever. And curious. The way this eyes widened when he had an idea and narrowed when he worked it all out, the way they lost focus when he was calculating in his head and the way they sharpened when he was putting all the component parts together. Steve could watch Tony endlessly. The man’s mind must be a magical place—as brilliant as his eyes.  
Steve wondered why the soulbond didn’t show him Tony’s mind like Tony, apparently, could see his. He wondered if it was because Tony saw in more colours than the seven that mere mortals were limited to. Maybe his mind was too brilliant to see... like sunlight that glints off fresh fallen snow, so brilliant it is blinding.  
Steve was brought out of his reverie with a bang. Tony had been watching a liquid boil in a test tube, frowning as the liquid turned from yellow to a shade of rust red and then ducked under the table just as the test tube exploded. Steve rushed to help Tony up, checking him for injuries while the man in question began laughing. “Well that’s not how you make coolant,” he coughed waving his hands to blow away the acrid smoke. Steve led him coughing and wheezing out of the lab and said, “Are you alright? Look at me, Tony. Are you ok?”  
Tony looked up at him. His eyes were red and watering. But he was smiling. “I think I invented tear gas,” he coughed.  
Steve was not satisfied until he had washed out Tony’s eyes. Then Steve sat Tony down, peering at him as if he had any idea what he was doing. Red rimmed and watering, Tony’s eyes were still beautiful. He was still laughing. And Steve learned that there is a shade of brown that is the colour of laughter and delight. It is dark and rich like well-tempered chocolate that shines like it’s solid and yet melts on the tongue.  
“I had an accident and I invented something. There should be a word for it... accivention?” said Tony.  
“There is a word for it. Serendipity,” said Steve.  
Tony thought about that, then said, “I think I like mine better.”  
“I think I like yours better, too. But are you ok?”  
“No, I am not ok. I’m better than ok, Steve. I’m fabulous. What is a little pain? I learned something!”  
“What? How to make yourself cry?” Steve crossed his arms, trying not to smile.  
Tony snorted, “I’m calling it tear gas. And that was just the bonus. The moral of today’s accivention was that sometimes a straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.”  
Steve shook his head, like he often did when Tony’s thoughts had left him far behind. “I don’t understand.”  
“You will,” Tony said cryptically as he pulled on a gas mask and headed back into the lab.

*

Steve watched the mountain stream flow down and thought of the maps he had pored over in mission prep. The water was gurgling away to the valley below… a long way below. The shortest distance was straight down. Or was it? He smiled and shook his head. “I understand, Tony,” he said and began limping upstream, back towards the Hydra fort.


	4. Chapter 4

There was still a lot of activity around the severely damaged Hydra schloss. Steve couldn’t help marvel at the destruction a few well aimed charges had done to the entire edifice. Then, he was glad that it was him and not Tony, who was standing here admiring the Avengers’ handiwork. Tony would not have liked to see the human cost, in blood and death and mutilated limbs. The dead militia men were laid out on the snow and the badly injured were being assisted by the less badly injured. Steve limped to one of the dead men lying farthest from the still smouldering courtyard. In the dark, he managed to get enough of the man’s gear off that he could pass for a militia man himself.  
The long dark coat and the helmet were a great disguise. From the air, Steve had spotted what had looked like a garage. Steve stumbled to where he had seen smaller vehicles parked just a few hours ago. He hoped that enough snow vehicles had escaped the carnage that he could steal one. As he limped on, hugging shadows and slipping between pillars and doorways, he felt himself cheer up. This area was completely undamaged, perhaps all the vehicles would have escaped the inferno. He thought his chances were rather good.  
But when he got to the garage he growled in frustration. It was empty. The survivors (he suspected the higher-ups) must have got away with whatever vehicles had been functional. He was still thinking of his next move when he felt a cold breeze and noticed that a part of the garage wall had fallen and taken a section of the floor with it. The wall overhung a sheer rock face but there was a sloped ledge leading away from the darkness of the howling ravine. There, less than five metres below him, was a snowbike, its nose buried in the snow, but looking fairly unharmed. Steve went through the rest of the garage facility, quietly breaking open all the lockers and cupboards. In fifteen minutes he limped back to the hole in the wall with a small bag full of dried foods, a water can, a torch, a first aid kit, a gun and a couple of knives, a tool kit and a can of fuel and a some rope.  
He cut off a length of rope and slowly lowered the supplies first and then himself down the ruined castle wall to the ledge. His luck held. The snowbike was mostly undamaged but for a busted head light, a misalignment in the handlebar and few scrapes on the bodywork. It took Steve almost a half hour to get it right away up, his shoulder screaming with the agony of the effort.  
The snowbike was very much like a motorbike, except for the wide ski board in place of regular wheels. It was also fueled and ready, so Steve tied his extra fuel can to the back along with the rest of his supplies and began hotwiring the vehicle. There was a sudden howling wind and a large chunk of snow fell from somewhere above him and tumbled into the ravine. Steve froze and rethought his plan.  
His feet sinking into the soft snow, keeping the machine between himself and the edge, he began to push the snowbike down the ledge into the open mountainside. There was not much light, but he had excellent night vision and right now, he was too close to the militia base to use the torch. The risk was not worth it.  
He didn’t know how long it took, he closed his mind to the pain and the fatigue that was threatening to pull him under, and like a man in a trance, he kept mechanically putting one foot before the other, gripping the snowbike like it was his lifeline back to Tony.

*

Steve held Tony’s hand like it was a lifeline. Tony had a few books pressed to his side with his elbow and was holding an ice cream cone with his free hand. Steve knew it was inconvenient for him not to be able to use both hands and Steve was already holding a bag full of groceries so his offer to hold the books had been ignored.  
Steve was feeling selfish today. Sometimes it felt like Tony belonged to the whole world. He was generous that way, offering up his time, his money, his efforts and himself to everyone who needed him. Sometimes, Steve wondered if there’d be any Tony left for him. And he felt selfish to ask Tony for another piece of his time and himself. He looked at their intertwined hands and tried to remember the need to be less clingy, when Tony squeezed his hand and Steve looked up at him.  
Tony had ice cream on his nose and a sparkle in his eyes and blew a raspberry with his pink wet lips.  
Steve realized with a start that Tony’s eyes were not just brown that turned gold in sunlight. They glowed with hints of amber. And Steve? He felt like a prehistoric insect captured and encased for all eternity. And Steve realized it was alright to be a little selfish and ask for a little bit of Tony that he could envelop himself in.

*

Steve stumbled in the dark but managed not to wrench his arm again. He looked around him. He had managed to clear the ravine edge and had got almost 500 metres away, on to the west side of the schloss. Far enough to be out of sound range as he started up the snowbike. Who knew Tony could take his mind of the pain? Painkiller Stark, Steve giggled.  
Holding the torch between his teeth, Steve got down on his knees and hot wired the bike. The bike roared alive and Steve threw himself on it and headed down slope. In the still of the mountain night, the bike had been louder than he had anticipated. He hoped there was no one around, in any condition to be suspicious or give chase.


	5. Chapter 5

Time can be a fractious thing. Disordered and perverse, the moments you wish would pass quickly, well they never do, do they? They stretch on and on and on, like the snowbike ride. How, Steve wondered, was it possible that sliding down a snow covered landscape could involve so much bone jarring vibration? In the dark, without a headlamp, just the tentative narrow gleam of the torch to guide him, Steve found the going difficult. Even his enviable eyesight could not spot all the hidden rocks and the steep drops in the treacherous terrain.  
Everything hurt. Even his jaw was aching with how hard he had been gritting his teeth aginst the pain. He was exhausted and the night refused to end. There was a scraping noise and suddenly the snowbike veered to the left and crashed into an exposed rock face. Steve was thrown off and he landed on his back looking up at the starless skies, wincing. He had no idea how far he had come, how far he still had to go. He did know where he was, but he knew he was cold and tired.  
Maybe he could just close his eyes and rest for a while. Maybe it was alright to sleep. Tony would not grudge him a little rest, would he? A small delay. It was so cold, but he could sleep. Just for a while. 

*  
It was a bright sunny day. One of summer’s less stifling days and Steve was lying on the grass soaking it in. The world was noisy with life and yet it was all peaceful. He sensed Tony and opened his eyes. The workshop must have been hot. Tony walked barefoot on the grass just as Steve sat up to watch him. He was dressed in his mechanic’s overalls that he must have found constraining. He had removed the top half of it and tied it around his waist. He was greasy and sweaty and unkempt. He looked beautiful.  
“Here, I made you something,” Tony said as he threw a something to Steve. Steve caught it and looked at it. It was a medallion, smaller than his palm, bigger than a coin. Burnished brass with a plain face and a little button on the top. Steve pressed it and the lid opened to show a beautiful compass face.  
“You made it for me?”  
Tony hummed and then smiled shyly, looking at Steve with lowered lids. He was going for the coquettish look, it worked. “So you won’t get lost,” he said.  
Steve looked at the compass, got up and readjusted his own position. Then tilted his hand so Tony could see the needle pointing true north, at himself.  
“Look at that,” said Steve, pretending to be amazed, “It works!”  
“You sap,” Tony giggled. And Steve held the burnished brass medallion in his fist and thought about how that colour was just another shade of Tony’s eyes.

*  
Steve snapped his eyes open and began shivering furiously. For a minute he thought it had started snowing again when he felt the cold dusting on his eyelashes and his hair. He had lost the helmet in the crash. He took a few minutes to eat a part of his rations and drink some water. They sky was a dull grey on one side and there was a lot more light. He could discern some natural features at least.  
It was time he had a plan.  
Steve pulled out the map from his inner pocket, and the compass Tony had made for him. Out of habit, he closed his eyes and tried to reach out to Tony though his soulbond. Silence. Steve shivered harder. His breathing was erratic and his heartbeat was out of control. Tony was alright. He was unconscious, he told himself. It was better that way. Otherwise he would do something foolhardy like come back to this wretched place. Tony was not dead or dying. That was not possible. How can someone so alive, die? Yes, Tony was probably unconscious. Still.  
That could not be good. He had to get back to their hideout in this part of the world. He looked at his map with a clearer head and soon he knew where to go.  
I will always find my way to you, Steve thought. And he thought of brown eyes like burnished brass, and clever fingers that made him thoughtful gifts. That kept him safe, from the cold, the exhaustion and the disorientation. And he got back on the snowbike, then got off when it wouldn’t start, refueled it and got back on. Fiddled with the controls and was finally on his way, correcting his course and speeding downhill for a few minutes until the snowline disappeared and the forest floor became visible. Then, he had to walk. Make that limp.  
It would be nice if epiphanies made the course of life less prosaic. But just because you are in love, the twisted ankle is no less a bother. And mud is always mud. However rich and brown it may be. However much it may remind Steve of a certain someone’s rich brown eyes.


	6. Chapter 6

Steve got rid of his disguise by mid morning. And even though he had been using up the contents of the bag (he was down to a single bar of dried food and the water bottle was long gone, most of the rope was spent and the mostly empty first aid kit was lying in the bushes a few kilometres ago) with the strange physics of hiking bags, the thing had only gotten heavier. He no longer looked like a militia man, just an out-of-place, disheveled, injured and dangerous-looking stranger wandering in the foothills of a known Hydra militia station. He, in fact, looked like a militia man in disguise.   
So he avoided the obvious tracks where he might run into people. By evening, Steve was too exhausted to think, but he had found a villager who agreed to give him a lift in an ancient tractor as far as the next town. The old man had almost collapsed when he saw Steve stumble into his barn.  
“Please,” Steve had managed holding out some crumpled notes, and making his request. And then he had collapsed.

*  
Steve and Tony were sitting at the kitchen table late one night. Tony was tinkering with a gadget, a little frown and a small smile on his face. He was humming something under his breath. Steve was captivated by the complete contentment on his face, the book in his own hand, went unregarded.  
Tony looked up and caught Steve’s eye. He raised his eyebrows, “What?”  
“Nothing,” Steve replied, smiling and shaking his head but his eyes would not go back to the book.  
Tony put away his gizmo and screwdriver and rested his elbows on the table, chin delicately poised on his knuckles and batted his eyelashes at Steve.  
“Steve…” he pouted.  
“You look happy.”  
“I am. Very. Are you?”  
Steve nodded. The moment felt light and heavy, at the same time. Steve wondered if Tony would try to make up a name for it.  
“You like tinkering, don’t you?” Steve said.  
“Nuh-uh. I looooove tinkering. It makes me happy. Figuring out how thinks work, and fiddling with it to make it work better,” said Tony. Then he looked at Steve curiously.  
“What makes you happy, Steve?”  
“You.”  
“I know I do. You make me happy too. But that was not what I asked. What makes you happy? What… not who…” Tony shook his head, smiling.   
And Steve didn’t know how to answer that question. The moment became heavier. He looked away from Tony’s burning bright brown eyes that stayed on him like they were analyzing his soul. Perhaps he was. There was nothing of Steve that was hidden from Tony. He had all the keys and every map to the inner landscape of his mind. Tony could unmake him. Lay him out in bits and pieces and see how they fit, how they worked, if they worked at all, what was broken, what needed fixing, what needed replacing.  
Steve felt like a badly made machine, and Tony would look at all the rusted nuts and broken gears and take them all apart, and lay them out and study them. Would he figure out what made him work? What made him broken? Would he fix that mess and put him back together? Would he be able to? Would he even want to?  
Steve shivered. But Tony did not go looking for the answer, using his soulbond key to explore the dark spaces of Steve’s mind. He waited for Steve. Smiling and gentle. Infinitely patient, like he never was with the rest of the world and suddenly Steve felt special.  
“When I was a kid, I used to draw. I think that made me happy.”  
Tony nodded like Steve had given the correct answer and Steve felt stupidly proud of himself.   
Later that day Tony had accompanied Steve to get all the art supplies he could imagine using. Steve chose like a million shades of earth tones. He wanted to get Tony’s eyes right.

*  
Steve woke up with a stifled scream. His head radiated with pain. He looked around and he looked around to get his bearings. He saw that he was lying hidden between bales of hay as the old tractor moved ponderously over the rutted landscape. His arm felt alright, so he realized the pain he had woken up to was not his own.  
He reached out to Tony over the soulbond and felt the fresh throbbing pain. Tony had a slight headache and an ache in his wrist. Steve could not sense any real physical pain. But Tony was screaming.   
Steve reached out to comfort his boyfriend. I am coming, my love. It will be alright, he tried to send. As suddenly as it had started, the pain disappeared. There was silence again.


	7. Chapter 7

By midnight Steve was back at their hideout. Pepper opened the door to him. Her red-rimmed eyes widened and her face broke into creased smiles. “Oh thank goodness,” she sighed as she threw herself at Steve.  
Steve held her one armed and groaned, “How is he?”  
“He will be fine. Now that you are here,” Pepper said, grabbing his arm and dragging Steve to an inner room. "How are YOU?" she asked. Steve did not reply.  
“Oh thank goodness,” Dr Banner said as he got up from a chair in the corner and began to adjust something. “We can bring him out of it,” he was saying to Steve.  
Steve was not listening. His eyes were fixed on Tony. Lying in bed, a bandage around his head, and another around his wrist. And Steve began to shiver uncontrollably to see Tony so still. His eyes closed, his hand not waving around, he almost did not look like his Tony. Tony was always so alive, so vibrant.   
He stood transfixed, unable to move and felt ice clawing over his body, pulling him under.  
“Steve, Steve,” Pepper’s voice brought him back and he looked at her with his broken eyes, his tears frozen somewhere deep inside.  
“Look at me,” she said gently, reaching up to hold his face in her palms. “He is alright. We had to sedate him to make sure you had a chance. He was going berserk with fear and worry…”  
“… and despair and guilt and anger… all at the same time,” Dr Banner interrupted, trying to keep his tone light. “You know, if he was himself he would have tried to come up with a name for what he was feeling.”  
“Distraught,” Pepper said, “That is what he was feeling. We were worried that his emotions would incapacitate you and you needed all the help you could get.”  
Steve collapsed into the chair Dr Banner had vacated and held Tony’s uninjured hand in a gentle clasp. Steve was still shivering but he could breathe again. Tony was alright.  
“The others are all out hunting for you. Let me go make a quick call,” Pepper said as she left the room.  
Dr Banner laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. “I have taken him off the sedation. He will back with you in a few minutes.”

*  
“Wha…” It was rare for Tony to be struck speechless but the floor littered with crumpled paper had done just that. Steve let out another frustrated groan as he crumpled another sheet of paper and added to the mess. Steve, the stoic soldier, the man who recovered smiling from bullet holes in the chest, was about to cry at the mess of his desk.  
Tony was kind. He did not laugh at him and make fun of his anguish.  
“What’s up, buttercup?” he asked instead, perching across the table and nudging Steve’s chin with his fingers.  
“I can’t… I can’t… get it right,” Steve stuttered and began bawling like his heart was breaking.  
Tony gathered the weeping mess that was Steve to his chest and whispered into his hair, “What do you need?”  
“Don’t… have…th..the..rr..right..sh..sh..shade of red,” Steve sobbed into Tony’s stomach.  
“Well soon fix that. Let’s go back to the store right now.”  
“Ou..out..of..st…stock.”  
Steve still doesn’t know why Tony didn’t burst out laughing right then as Steve showed him his palette.   
“This is too ppp..pink… this is too yel…yellow. I tried and tried b..but I can’t mmm..mix it right.”  
Tony went quiet and Steve looked up to see the man thinking. His eyes were shining again.  
“Come with me.”  
In a minute they were in Tony’s lab as he heated a small batch of ochre. The blue light from the bunsen burner reflected on Tony’s goggles and while Steve was all for safety, he wished he could see Tony’s eyes. It was like he could look at then for all eternity and never get the catalogue of colours right. His experiments in his “studio” were proof of all his failures.  
“And now for the vinegar,” said Tony as he dribbled the liquid into the yellow powder, which immediately began to smoke and like magic dissolved into a brilliant earthy shade of red.   
“Tony!” Steve whispered, delighted by the magic he had just seen performed.  
“Et Voila! And we have the favourite pigment from the prehistoric to the Romans,” Tony said, delivering a perfect regency bow before Steve’s spontaneous applause.  
Steve got it right that night. Because, you see, brown has a bit of gold and red. That is a secret very few people know.  
*

Tony groaned as he came to, muttering, “Ve… Steve..”  
“I’m right here Tony.”  
He opened his eyes and looked at Steve, unblinking.   
“What kept you…?”  
You. You kept me, safe and together, Steve did not say.  
“Sorry, I’m late. Hope you kept the bed warm for me,” Steve said as he climbed in next to Tony, careful not to jostle him.  
“You got that shoulder and ankle looked a yet?” Tony frowned.  
“Tony,” Steve whined, pulling him closer to himself.   
“Conjugal rights will be denied till medical attention has been…”  
Steve kissed him.   
Space is a fractious thing. However hard you try to grab on to things, they feel too far away. Sinking your fingernails into the feeling and pulling it closer, closer, closer and yet the space never closes up enough.  
“I love you,” Steve whispered into Tony’s mouth. He had refrained from dropping the “L-Bomb” as Tony had called it since the last time they had been in injured. Tony never said it, and Steve thought he shouldn’t either. But, he realized, Tony said ‘I love you’ not with words, but with the brown of his eyes. That turned gold in the sunlight, and chocolate with delight, and held him like amber, and protected him like burnished brass and became red ochre just for him. Tony loved him with a strength of emotion that others considered "incapacitating." And Steve shivered again. But this time he was smiling into the kiss.  
There was a knock at the door. There was a loud clearing of throats. There was a “Tony!” in an exasperated female voice. There was forced medical attention. There were bandages and injections and stinging alcohol swabs to the face. There were lectures. There was rejoicing when the rest of team got back. Then there was nightfall.  
There was a kiss and some tender lovemaking. Which became frantic and messy when control, like Time, and Space, became a fractious thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, thank you for getting through this mush. I very tentatively ask you to let me know what you think. Kind words and kudos will be much appreciated. Constructive criticism will be truly welcome. Other things, I shall be borne with a stoicism that would make Steve proud.


End file.
